CLI reference / host / cron

stado host cron

Invocation

stado host cron [OPTIONS] <TARGET>

Purpose

Read TARGET's crontab, and optionally prune one entry from it. The periodic table is the one place a fleet host can declare a process that no launchd domain and no registry document mentions. charless-mac-mini carried four `@reboot` entries outside both, two of which restart duplicates that had just been retired with verified postconditions — so every repair on that host was one reboot from coming back, and the only way to change the table was a bare `crontab -e` over ssh. `--prune` previews by default and refuses anything but a single matching line that references `$HOME/.stado`; `--apply` saves the whole table under `$HOME/.stado/cron-backups` first and prints the `--restore` command that puts it back.

Required inputs and options

Input or optionContract
<TARGET>Positional input; required or optional as shown in the invocation.
--prune <PRUNE>Literal text naming the ONE entry to remove; usually the script's path. Refused when it reaches more than one line
--restore <RESTORE>Install a table saved by an earlier `--prune --apply`
--applyChange the table. Without it, `--prune` only reports what it would remove
--jsonEmit the report as JSON

Output and state effect

This is an inspection/reporting operation. It emits the result described above and does not change managed state unless an explicit option in this page says otherwise. Pass `--json` when the command exposes that machine-readable option.

Refusals

  • Refused when it reaches more than one line
  • Before dispatch, Stado refuses a missing required token shown in the invocation, an unknown option, or a value outside a listed value set; argument-usage failures exit with code 2.